A pull-type forage harvester has a wheel supported frame provided with a draw bar or tongue whereby the harvester can be pulled by a tractor in a field having a crop to be gathered. The harvester has a pick-up and infeed whereby the crop is conveyed into a housing. The corn passes over a shear bar into a cutterhead rotatable about an axis transverse to the direction of travel of the harvester. The cutterhead has knives which cooperate with the shear bar to chop the crop fed into the machine.
A common pull-type harvester has a trough downwardly and rearwardly of the cutterhead which receives the cut crop. A conveyor in the trough moves the crop to a blower for discharge into a trailing wagon. The trough is parallel to the axes of the cutterhead. Such a harvester is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,426,043.
Pull-type harvesters are generally used to harvest hay crops. Some farmers use them to also harvest corn. However, in harvesting corn, the stalks, leaves and ears of corn are fed with a cutterhead and only a portion of the corn kernels are cracked in the chopping operation. Many of the kernels remain whole. When such corn crop is fed to cows, uncracked kernels are not digested by the animals and end up on the ground in manure. Feed value is lost.
To overcome the problem of uncracked corn kernels, self-propelled forage harvesters have been provided with corn processors. Such processors comprise a pair of rolls spaced apart a distance less than the thickness of a kernel. When the kernels are passed between the rolls, the kernels are cracked. When subsequently fed to animals, the cows digest the kernels. With greater food value, the cows produce more milk.
A self-propelled forage harvester is expensive. The cost is beyond what many farmers can afford. A pull-type harvester is much less expensive. However, generally corn processors have not been provided with pull-type machines. If a pull-type machine is used to harvest corn without processing the kernels, the feed value is limited.
When corn is harvested with a pull-type machine without a corn processor, a large volume of chopped crop is delivered to the trough through which the crop is conveyed to a blower. When an auger or other conveyor operates to convey the crop in the trough, there is a tendency to throw the material upwardly and out of the trough. U.S. Pat. No. 4,506,840 shows the use of a baffle to help hold a chopped crop in a trough and to deflect material downwardly toward an auger.